Super Tweaking Windows XP for Gaming

Disabling useless processers & Windows features.

Windows XP has came with quite a few new but extremly useless and memory hogging features that constantly run in the background and slow your system down.

Some of the features that should be disabled are automatic updates, system restore and remote assistance.

To disable these 3 fairly useless services...

1. Hit Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Performance and Maintenance
4. Select System
5. Select System Restore Tab
6. Check "Turn off System Restore"
7. Select Automatic Updates tab
8. Select "Turn off autoamtic updates"
9. Hit the Remote tab
10. Uncheck "Remote Assistance" & "Remote Desktop


Now that the three main WIndows features that severly hog your PC's power are disabled, its time to move onto the numerous other Windows processers that further drag down your system.


1. Hit start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Adminastrative Tools
4. Select Services

Now there should be a large list of services and alot of them are running on your system right now.

Alot are vital for running Windows and alot are completely useless.

The average PC user will have about 27 of these processers running all the time, more than half of them she/he does not need.

Now for a standard PC with maybe a printer & a broadband connection and no fancey networking, routing or any advanced pheriples and wireless devices, the following services should be set as disabled.

To disable a service, double-click it and set the Startup Type drop-down menue as "Disabled" then click "apply" and "ok" and move onto the next.


Automatic Updates
ClipBook
COM+ Event System
Creative Service for CDROM Access (If you have a Creative soundcard)
Cryptographic Services
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator
DNS Client (Do NOT disable if your on a Dial-up internet connection)
Error Reporting Service
HID Input Service
Indexing Service
IPSEC Services
Messenger
MS Software Shadow Copy Provider
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE
Network DDE DSDM
NVIDIA Display Driver Service (For nVIDIA card users)
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number
Print Spooler (Only if you dont have a printer)
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
Routing and Remote Access
Security Accounts Manager
Server
Shell Hardware Detection
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
System Event Notification
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telnet
Terminal Services
Themes (If you are not bothered about fancey looks for your desktop)
Upload Manager
WebClient
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMDM PMSP Service
WMI Performance Adapter
Workstation


Note that everyones system is differant so dont be wondering why some services in the list above are not on your list.

Now that you have disabled those Windows services, its time to clean up your startup programs and system tray...


1. Hit Start
2. Hit Run
3. Type "msconfig" without the quotes and hit enter
4. Hit Startup tab
5. Click on "Disable All"
6. Press Apply then Ok and answer YES to reboot your PC.


Now you dont have all that junk starting up when Windows starts and I can guarentee you that you'll notice a phonomenol power boost that will be equally as noticable in games.


Optimising your Windows Page file.

Windwows uses whats called a pagefile to act as RAM for file swapping duties and the-like & is vital for games.

The pagefile itself is harddrive space taken off your harddrive and kept in the pagefile itself so for example if my harddrive is 20GB and I set my pagefile to 1GB then my HDD would suddenly become 19GB in size.

To edit Windows pagefile...

1. Click Start
2. Click Control panel
3. Click System
4. Click Advanced tab
5. Click "Settings" for the "Performance" section
6. Click Advanced tab
7. At the bottom, click "Change"
8. Check the "Custom Size" box
9. Set your pagefile usng the following table

128MB of RAM -> set to 1500MB
256MB of RAM -> set to 1000MB
512MB of RAM -> set to 700MB
1GB of RAM -> set to 500MB


Cleaning up your system

Now its time to give your system a spring-clean and free from unused invalid light bulb that litters many PC users systems and over time can lead to configuration problems and nasty software conflicts and slightly slow application response rates.

You'll need to downlaod the following free programs and install them...

Ad-Aware

Spybot S&D

Reg Seeker

Light bulb Cleaner

Cacheman (A must-have utility for people with 512MB RAM or less)

Hijack This


Now then, to get the most out of these program, you must configure them correctly...

Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D are pretty well configured to begin with so i'll go straight to light bulb Cleaner...



1. Open light bulb Cleaner
2. Click Windows tab
3. Tick all boxes except "Menue Order Cache & Windows Size/Location Cache
4. Click Applications tab
5. Tick everything
6. Click Issues tab
7. Click everything
8. Click Options button
9. Click Settings tab
10. Uncheck the box that reads "Only delete files in Windows Temp folder older than 10 days"
11. Click ok and exit the program.


Now open Cacheman...

1. Click on the Settings button
2. Click the "RAM" icon
3. Under "Memory Ammount", set it to "User defined" then move the slider as far to the right as it goes
4. Uncheck all four boxes but leave "Extreme recovery mode" checked
5. Click the "Optimization" tab at the top
6. Check both "Disable executive paging" & "Unload DLL's from memory"
7. Exit the program and answer "yes" to save settings and answer yes to the reboot prompt.



Ok now that you've tweaked your programs to work at there best, its now time to use them...

NOTE: No other programs should be running while you run the programs so bookmark this page and exit IRC or whatever other programs you have running and come back here when your done.

Open and run the following programs in the following order...


Ad-Aware
Spybot S&D
light bulb Cleaner
Reg Seeker
Hijack This


Ok now your back, your PC should be alot more clutter free but these programs never do a complete job of it so its now time to manually clean your Windows up...


1. Look on your desktop and delete any icons & shortcuts that you no longer need or use or have its software uninstalled
2. Go into your start menue and do the same thing
3. Go into Control panel
4. Go into Add or Remove programs
5. Uninstall any programs that you no longer use or want from the list
6. Go into your Program Files folder typically located at C:Program Files
7. Delete all files and folders that relate to programs or games you uninstalled or do not want any longer


Configuring your systems BIOS for maximum gaming power.

Accesing your systems BIOS varies from PC to PC but typically its a good 10 second hammering of the Del or F1 key while Windows is booting up.

BIOS vary from motherboard to motherboard but modern gaming boards will have alot more options in them than basic motherboards like Dell PC's have which is why i'm not going to be specific, rather just point out the general things to change that I think most PC's will have.

AGP Aperture size should be set to the highest possible.
AGP mode should be set to 8.0 or how high it can go
AGP Fastwrite should be enabled
USB 2.0 controller mode should be set to "Fullspeed" if you have USB 2 ports on your PC

Any performance enhancing options that many, many gaming boards have should be set to there maximum for example my Asus K8V SE board has an option where I can set the overall speed of my PC to "slow", "normal", "fast" or "turbo". Obviously the Turbo option is going to produce more thermal output on my CPU, RAM & motherboard but its not really enough to worry about especially if you have fans in your case.


Updating your system drivers.

Updating your systems drivers is vital for squeezing as much performance out of it as possible, especially sound card and graphics card drivers.

Here is a list of driver links for the differant components from all the major manufactuers...

Graphic Cards

nVIDIA

ATI


Sound cards


Creative Soundblaster


Windows Updates

1. Hit Start
2. Click on Windows Update icon


Now it will take you to the Microsoft website and will scan your system and come up with a list of reccoemnded updates.

Alot of these updates are rubbish and unncessary. I cannot be specific about what not to downlaod and what to download since everyones PC is differan but updates such as language packs and stuff like that.

Critical update patches for Windows Media player and stuff like that should be downloaded and so should Microsoft .NET framework since alot of software nowadays relies on this code.

Remember that uninstalling previous drivers before installing new ones is highly reccomended since it ensures a bug-free crashless install.

Here's how to PROPERLY uninstall drivers...


1. Go into add/remove programs
2. Uninstall the driver you want from the list
3. GO into your Program Files folder and delte all folders and files associated with the driver you have just uninstalled
4. Delete any start menue entries associated with the deleted driver
5. Run Reg Seeker
6. Run light bulb Cleaner
7. Reboot your system and then install the latest driver


I would of made links to motherboard drivers but I find updating mobo drivers to be quite a risky and an often unsucsesfull procedure and to cover it in this guide would take up far too much time.

If you would like to update your BIOS, there are many guides out there, one I reccomend would be BIOS Guide from the trusty tweaktown.com website which I highly reccomend also.



Tweaking your nVIDIA card.

1. Right-click on your desktop & select Properties
2. Click Settings tab
3. Click advanced button
4. Click on the tab that reads your graphics card name, i.e GeForce FX 5600 for me.
5. On the pop-up menue on the left, click on Performance & Quality"
6. Set Antialiasing to off
7. Set Anisotriopic filtering to off
8. Set Image quality to high and if your card is good then set to maximum
9. Set v-sync to off
10. Set Force Minimaps to "none"
11. Set Conformant texture clamp to off
12. Go into the Direct 3D section
13. Set Max frames to render ahead to 0


Tweaking ATI Card


After installing ATI Tray Tools (will be reffered to as "ATT" from now on), launch the application and you will notice it will load into the system tray (bottom right of the screen). After it has fully-loaded, right-click on the icon to get the context-menu which contains all of ATT's features.

To start, I recommend customizing some settings to squeeze the maximum performance out of your graphics card:

Under Direct3D and OpenGL look for the "Texture Preference" and "Mipmap Detail Level" options. They should default to High Quality. You can use lower quality versions to gain a FPS benefit whilst losing a small amount of image quality. For example, try setting "Texture Preference" to Performance and "Mipmap Detail Level" to Quality as a balance between performance and image quality. If you want the maximum performance, set them both to High Performance and then increase them if you notice the textures are too dull or you are getting artifacts.

Make sure that under Direct3D that Catalyst A.I is at least set to Low, never turn it off no matter what. I highly recommend to set it to High to improve performance and you can judge the image quality difference. These are a group of display optimizations but some game-specific optimizations also depend on Catalyst A.I being at atleast Low.

Again, under the Direct3D section, go to the "Optimizations" area and make sure both "Anisotropic Filtering" and "Trilinear Filtering" optimizations are ticked.

The next setting in this area is Flip Qeue Size (the same as maximum pre-rendered frames in NVIDIA card settings). Higher values will increase the amount of frames the CPU can prepare before they are processed by the GPU. Higher value settings are more likely to increase average FPS, but also induce extra input lag. The default is undefined. On a balance between input responsiveness and FPS/graphic smoothness, I recommend to set it to 3. Experiment with higher values to increase FPS. On the flip side, if you're experiencing a lot of input lag, try lower values like 2 or 1, but this is likely to reduce FPS and make the game feel "jerky".

Under Tweaks open up Standard Tweaks:

-Geomtry Instancing (make sure this is ticked)
-Fast Z Clear Enable (make sure this is ticked)
-WMV Acceleration (under "System" tab, make sure this is ticked)
-Disable Block Write (under "System" tab, unticking will increase the speed that data is written to VRAM but usually reduces overall performance as usually data will be stuck in qeue, make sure this is TICKED)
-Z Mask Enable (this option is enabled by default to stop the z-buffer from being filled with useless information. Many people report overall increased FPS when this setting is unticked. I recommend to experiment and UNTICK this setting to see if you get a performance increase).

Under Tweaks open up Advanced Tweaks:

Select Advanced D3D Settings from the drop-menu list:

There are three settings for each value:

Blank = Disabled
Faded Checkmark = No value
Checkmark = Enabled

I recommend to put a checkmark in these settings:

-All settings under "Fog"
-All settings under "Additional Tweaks" except for Line AA
-All settings under "Tiling Settings"

Settings like "compress stencil buffer" and "color compression" will allow more data to fit into VRAM (and to be accessed faster) without reducing image quality in any noticeable manner.

Switch to Multi-Threading (experimental) in the drop-menu at the top.

To start with, tick "Enable MT support" and set the minimum threads to 1 and the maximum threads to 2. This should be especially beneficial on multi-core/multi-thead CPU's. You can also try to increase the maximum threads higher, for example if you have a quad-core CPU try a maximum value of 4.

Your card is now set to give the best balance of image quality and performance.


Tips


1. Run them programs often, especially when you've been making alot of changes or have been installing/uninstalling alot of sfotware on your PC.

2. Run Cacheman before you play games and recover as much RAM as possible so you can get smoother gameplay.

3. Setting games to "High CPU Priority" in Windows Task Manager can sometimes give noticable performance gains.

4. Try to keep your files and folders organized so that your PC is as clutter free as possible.

5. Exit all programs and applications such as MSN messanger or IRC before you play games to maiximise gaming performance.


Enjoy!

Opera 10.50 Pre-Alpha Review

Opera just recently released the new Opera 10.10 browser with support for an entirely new technology (Opera Unite), and they are already on their way for 10.50 which bring almost an entirely new Opera experience.

Right after 10.10 release Opera has also made available alpha versions of 10.20 which includes support for running Opera Widgets as standalone applications, without requiring the browse to run.

Opera software recently promised an early preview of their upcoming Opera 10.50 release, which it seems they are really excited about, and for good reason. While opera might be the fastest browser around when it comes to loading content thanks to it's remote compression technology, Opera Turbo, it still had a lot to catch up when it comes to JavaScript execution and rendering, where Opera 10 was still lagging far behind Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

To rectify this Opera promised a brand new JavaScript engine called Carakan which boasts much better JavaScript execution speeds as it compiles to native code before execution. And the speed in impressive indeed!

On my personal system, running the latest version of Chrome 4 dev (4.0.266.0) and a nightly build of Firefox 3.7 (20091221 -- basically two days old) Opera came out first, boasting a 36% faster speed than Chrome 4, and 73% faster than Firefox.

Needless to say these were not even an alpha quality builds, and any comparison is meaningless in the long term, considering that the results could change significantly by the time the final is released. However it is clear, that Opera 10.50 will compare well whenever it comes out.

Besides and entirely new and awesome JavaScript engine, Opera 10.50 comes with a great many new features. The first one you're bound to notice is the new interface which uses the Vista / 7 Aero Glass effects to blend in better with Windows systems. For Windows 7 users it also brings support for jump-lists and Aero Peek.

The new interface rids itself of the menu -- which can be reenabled though -- and puts tabs on top in the fashion of Chrome. It also now features a button on the top left, in the fashion of the Office menu button in Office 2007 which gives you access to the old menu options.

The browser also features a new graphics library called Vega which allows for much faster performance, more complex graphics rendering, and support for transforms and transitions in CSS. Opera 10.50 will also feature the upgraded Presto 2.50 rendering engine which offers much better CSS3 and HTML5 support with rounded corners, box shadows, offline storage, web SQL etc.

Opera 10.50 also finally makes all the notifications non-modal -- like the notifications in Firefox -- ensuring that your browsing experience is unhindered by popups offering to remember your password.

Finally Opera 10.50 has possibly the best implementation of Private browsing of all browsers. You can open not only private windows, but also private tabs which are demarcated by a lock-like icon instead of the websites own icon. This icon disappears if you expand tabs to thumbnails though, making it difficult to differentiate between private and non-private tabs -- but hey, this is just a pre-alpha so this will surely be fixed in the final release.

It is important to note again that the browser is at this point not even alpha quality, and it will crash a LOT. So much infact that despite using Firefox nightlies and Chrome devs, I found Opera 10.50 unusable in its current state, which is sad, since it is a brilliant browser otherwise.

Overall Opera 10.50 seems to be packing quite a punch, and seems to be a much more significant update to the browser than Opera 10 even tried to be.
Download Opera 10.50 pre-alpha from here

Microsoft Security Essentials Review

If you thought that anti-virus software was something that got in the way of doing what you wanted to do, then it's time to think again.

Microsoft's long promised free anti-virus tool has finally arrived, and there's no longer any excuse for not protecting your PC. Microsoft Security Essentials is free, unobtrusive, and it works.

When Microsoft closed down its OneCare service, and announced that it was going to be releasing a free security tool, it was easy to make jokes. OneCare hadn't been a success, and its anti-virus component wasn't as effective as many of the free alternatives.

But Microsoft rarely gives up, and it hired several well-respected antivirus researchers to give its security practice a much needed boost – initially for its enterprise ForeFront solution, and then to work on a consumer version, codenamed Morro.

The install is quick and easy, with three versions available for download. One is for 32-bit XP systems, the others are separate 32- and 64-bit releases for Vista and Windows 7. Clocking at just over 4MB, it takes less than a minute to download over a broadband connection.

Once installed it will automatically update to new versions as they come out, and then regularly download updated signature files as they become available from Microsoft Update.

When you're up and running, Security Essentials will download the most recent set of signatures and scan your PC for the first time.

MSE's scanner is quite nippy – and it scanned our heavily loaded test PC in under 10 minutes. We're still not sure about the default scan settings, though.

Back when we looked at the beta we said that the default system scan time of 2am on a Sunday morning wasn't suitable for most home PCs, which were likely to be off at that time.
Yes, MSE does offer real time scanning of files as you open them, and when you download them from the web, but that doesn't stop a zero day exploit getting past MSE.

That's the value of regular system scans, as they catch malware that's infected a PC in the brief window of opportunity before a new signature file arrives.

We'd recommend changing the default scan time to something that's more suitable as soon as possible. It's also a good idea to see if MSE's default actions are what you want.

The warning dialog box is clear and descriptive, with links to additional online information. There's enough information to help even the most naive user decide what to do.

Each copy of MSE isn't on its own, either. They're all part of Microsoft's SpyNet service.

If a new piece of malware appears on the net, and if it's detected by MSE, then it'll report back to Microsoft, and the information used to help build a signature file that can be delivered to every MSE (and every ForeFront) install.

Security Essentials turns every PC that runs it into part of a massive honeypot, making MSE not just an anti-malware tool, but also an early-warning system for all Internet-connected Windows PCs.

We ran MSE on several machines throughout the beta, and hardly noticed it. Once or twice when a PC was turned on after being off for a few days it recommended a manual scan, but that was the total extent of our interactions with the tool.

In fact, if you're using Windows 7, you're unlikely to realise that it's there at all, as the status icon is kept with the rest of the hidden task bar icons.

This really is essential software for your PC, and for anyone who's PC you're supporting. Thanks to MSE there's really no need to think about installing anti-virus software on a Windows PC – it's now just a matter of deciding whether to use MSE or another anti-malware package.

Microsoft really has stepped up to the mark here, providing Windows PCs with the essential security tools they need.

Pros:
Microsoft Security Essentials is one of the simplest and easiest to use anti-malware tools around. It's quick, unobtrusive and works without slowing your PC down.

Malware is caught quickly, and the default actions work well for most users. It's a small download, and keeps itself up to date, and above all, it's free – with no need to register or re-register.

Cons:
There really isn't much to dislike here, as MSE does what it says on the tin, raising the bar for all the other anti-malware vendors out there.

Our one big caveat is the default time for scheduled complete system scans. Once a week at a time a PC is likely to be off is not good enough, by a long way.

Final Verdict
If you're not running anti-virus software, you really have no excuse. MSE is free, simple to use- and has been tested by independent anti-malware certification bodies.

It may not have all the features of other security suites out there, but that's really not that important – especially when widespread use of MSE should help make it a safer internet for everyone.

Windows 7 Tips and Tricks

Stop Open with lookup Web Service

Click on the Start Button and type in regedit. Then go to the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

On Left side look for
NoInternetOpenWith open it & change it to 1.

Note:-
If 'NoInternetOpenWith' is not present right click to create a new DWORD

The next time you use Open With on a file you will be taken directly to the application list.


Calibrate Your Display for better Viewing

Just click on the Start Button and type in "dccw" (without quotes) and hit Enter.

Then follow the on screen directions.


Change Windows Key After Installing

Click on the Start Button and type in 'command prompt'. Right click on the Command Prompt in Start menu and select Run As Administrator.
At command prompt, type in "slmgr.vbs -ipk " e.g. "slmgr.vbs -ipk <1111-2222-1111-1111-2222>

Activate windows after changing the key, run "slmgr.vbs -ato"



Speed up your new OEM PC by removing Crapware

When you buy PC from OEM it is often loaded with extra software that you just don’t need. This crapware is a waste of disk space, memory & even performance of your PC.

Although you can manually remove each extra piece of software on your computer there is a free tool called PC Decrapifier that will automatically remove this it is great for beginners.

Download the latest copy from here.

Click on the downloaded file to start.

Its pretty straight forward just follow the on-screen instructions.

Also experienced users can use Revo Uninstaller to manually uninstall Carpware it can be downloaded from here.


Configuring Remote Media Streaming


Start up Windows Media Player and then click Stream and Allow Internet access to home media…

Next, you will need to link and online ID to your Windows Live account. Click Link an online ID
If you have not yet linked an online ID to your Windows account you will need to download the Windows Live Provider first. Click Add an online ID provider.

You will now be taken to your Web browser where you can select an online ID provider plug-in to use with Windows 7. Click on the plug-in you want to use.

Then download the plug-in and close your browser install this plugin.

Click Link online ID to setup your Windows Live ID.

Type in your Windows Live ID credentials and then click Sign in.

Now you will see your Windows Live ID linked to your Windows account.

Now switch to Windows Media Player and click Allow Internet access to home media.

After a UAC prompt you will see the confirmation screen.

You are now finished with configuring Remote Media Streaming on one computer. Repeat the above steps on your other Windows 7 computer. After both computers are configured restart Windows Media Player 12 on each computer and you will see the shared media show up under Other Libraries.


Create a Flip3D Taskbar Shortcut


Right click on the Desktop and select New and then Shortcut.

Type in RunDll32 DwmApi #105 in the location box and click Next.

Type in Flip3D as the Name and click Finish.

You will now have an shortcut on the desktop that will launch Flip3D but it has the wrong icon.

Right click on the Flip3D shortcut and select Properties.

On the Shortcut tab click the Change Icon button.

Change the Look for icons in this file text box to C:\windows\explorer.exe(you can replace C: with D:,E:, etc depending upon the drive in which Windows is Installed) and it Enter.

The Flip3D icon will now be available. Select it and click OK.

Click OK to close out the shortcut properties window.

Finally, just drag and drop the new shortcut on the Windows 7 taskbar to pin it.

Activate Aero Interface

Note:
This Trick works on both Vista & 7.

Click on the start button and key in regedit and hit Enter.

Navigate to,

'HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows and DWM'

on left side

Set Composition to 1 and CompositionPolicy to 2.

Now open command prompt & type 'net stop uxsms' & 'net start uxsms'.